The forgotten child

This summer my father had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of being our nanny for a week and as he ran screaming from the house he left the kids a departing gift: new Indian names, as he had once bestowed on myself and my brother...aka Running Fox and Moss. Upon Shawn Joaquin and Madelena he bestowed the following: Dark Cloud and Sunshine. 

Sunshine often gets short shrift in this blog and among tales told to friends; Dark Cloud's heightened sense of drama and passion often overshadow her happiness and general brilliance. They're both terribly interesting people, yet she has consistently ended up with fewer photos, baby book entries and stories. So let today be her day. 

Madelena is fully bilingual, as I realized in a moment of her total frustration today. She asked Gregg multiple times for something he couldn't understand — galletas, bocadillos, almendras — and then stamped her foot in annoyance and shouted SNACKS, Daddy!

She knows all of her colors (in Spanish) and counts up to 13 in both languages. She can glance at a picture and say "Hay quatro elefantes" and be correct 100% of the time. She laughs like a monkey and says "oh, that's funny" at every opportunity. She talks to strangers and asks them "hey, man, what you doing?" and says "hasta luego" while giving a beauty pageant wave. She loves to jump off high and dangerous places and to shout "corre!" and take off before you know what's happening.

When her brother cries she immediately goes to him and hugs him, saying "lo siento" even if it's nothing that she caused. She has many opportunities each and every day to do this. 

When offered a shirt she doesn't like she'll say "Éste? Hmmmm....no thank you" rather than just tossing it to the ground like other children in the house. She says "discúlpame" at the end of her meals and after burping and either "oh, that's so nice" or "gracias, mama!"  for any item handed to her, no matter how crappy. She sings constantly, mixing the phrases and words from Pío Pío Pío with Pop Goes the Weasel. 

When put to bed she shouts "night night" and then proceeds to sing for the next 90 minutes. Should you cough or sneeze in another room, she breaks her song to shout "SALUD!" She insists on 15 kisses at bedtime, to include eskimo, mariposa, cabeza y boca on demand. She says "te quiero" often and rarely cries, though in the early morning she is known to shout "NO DADDY" and wail if the wrong person walks in to get her dressed. 

She is our Sunshine in all ways, so aptly named by my dad. It took over two years to bring her from a concept to our a beautiful daughter, and if I forget to record that she walked at 10 months and learned her letters at 24, I will never, ever forget that the first time I saw her picture, I knew she was ours.

Te quiero, mi hijita. Te quiero. 

When not to date

There was an interesting article on CNN this week about five reasons to not go on that first date; the reasons were as follows:

1. You're lonely

2. You're desperate

3. You're infectious

4. You're not over someone else

5. You're drunk 

While these reasons are all well and fine (though I do question the last one - who says that blowing chunks on your date or being unable to recall his name will not test both his compassion and provide endless fodder for dinner parties for both of you?) I had a few more that I felt should be added. 

6. You're married. To someone else. Even trying to date your spouse is challenging and often not that fun, let alone trying to be interesting for a new person. Plus think of all the new underwear you'd have to buy. And remember that conversations among marrieds tend to wander back to kids and the next day's trip to Home Depot — and you often find conversation outside of THAT too mentally exhausting. So why waste anyone's time, money or Friday night effort on a date when you could spend it picking up ten thousand pieces of crap left around the house by the kids or drinking a bottle of Two Buck Chuck while folding stained underwear.

7. He's a big fat loser. We've all had that cringe factor before a date that we know will lead to nothing, but feel we're being too judgmental and need to broaden our horizons...accept facial deformations, poor grammar, bad manners or interesting body odor because you know WHAT, if you open your heart...THIS JUST MIGHT BE THE ONE. Ha. Stay home. Eat ice cream. Watch Weeds on your DVR - you'll save everyone some heartache and yourself from listening to a possible mouth breather say "You got a pretty mouth" while visibly chewing gum.

8. You're the parent of small children. When your kids are little you fall into the habit of referring to yourself in the third person and speaking casually about verboten topics, and it's hard to break in public spaces. And no one wants to cop a feel or make out with someone who just said "Mama needs to go tinkle and wipe the oogity boogities out of her nose, so wait RIGHT here."

Add this all together and you have a hallelujah from me, thankful to be a smug married who is in fact not so smug at all, and realizes that while being married is hard, hard work each and every day....I never again have to put on a brave face, straighten up my back, take that last glance in the mirror as I walk out the door and say "you can do this. Maybe it won't be so bad after all." 

It might be better with some ranch dressing

Shawn Joaquin has finally gotten the hang of the whole sleeping thing and often has his wake ups down to one 3am wail or just a few half-hearted attempts to rouse sympathy for his forced confinement to bed. Tonight he was up several times before 8:30, each excuse more lame than the last. Books. Water. Bathroom.

And so it went, until his final plea.

I can't sleep.

Why?

Because I ate paper. And it didn't taste very good. 

Well, don't eat paper.

OH. [Slapping himself in the head.] Good night.

And with that he ambled back to bed, toilet tissue stuck to his lower lip and a faint smacking sound heard in the distance as he tried to finish it off. Yes, he's a freak. But he's MY freak. And I love him.

Olorific

SJ, while hugging me: Hey, you smell like a mama.

Me, hugging back: What does a mama smell like?

SJ: Pizza. And dog food. Can I smell your bottom now?

And once again we find where "hey, it's all natural curiosity" and "back off, freak" intersect. 

Lint and other souvenirs

When parents of similarly aged children tell me how happy they are each and every day, I immediately assume their dose of Lexapro is higher than mine or their crack is of a higher grade. Thus I am always thrilled to find other parents who are more in my corner of the world, overwhelmed and under-rested and wondering at least once a day whether we are complete failures as parents and possibly as human beings. Thankfully, I believe my contingent is larger if quieter, perhaps by virtue of our general hoarseness from repeating everything from "that's not a good choice" to "knock it off or I'll give you something to REALLY cry about" ten thousand times a day. 

On a recent drug-free vacation with the kids, I was worried about how we might entertain them and survive a week in the wilds of the Sierras, far from TV, phones, internet, zoos, kid-oriented cafes, parks and Gymboree classes. Whether we have become so dependent on our au pair and paid memberships that without the crutch of places to go, people to see and those to care for our children that we would crack under the pressure....with four leaving Oakland and a lesser number returning. 

The first couple of days were relatively painless for me, boosted as I was by a new early bedtime of 8pm and a subsequent 10 hours of sleep. Gregg, unable to lose his big city ways, was up until midnight each night and thus lacked the reserves to deal with the near-constant "what are we doing AFTER this" that accompanied each trip to the lake, Sand Pond, a hike, Frasier Falls, the lodge and every meal. After 48 hours of near-death wrestling matches between the kids over things as random as dirty napkins, we learned that each was exceptionally well-behaved when outside of the hearing range of the other. With that in mind we began to spend quality time with each kid, if not with each other. Finally on Wednesday, with not a clean pair of underwear between us nor a sock without a ring of dirt around it, we had to come together as a family and go to the laundromat in Blairsden, 18 screech-filled miles from our cabin. Oh, if only we had known the wonders that existed there. 

There, in the shabby confines of the very same laundromat I had visited with my family 35 years ago, the children came together as one. They slammed carts into each other with great glee, shouting UNO DOS TRES GOOOOO! while heading full steam into each other, knocking at least one child to the ground to his or her delight. The coins, lint, string and other bits of detritus found under tables were treasures to be shared and shoved into pockets and the occasional mouth, and watching the clothes go round was as exciting as a new episode of the Backyardigans with an original score by Phillip Glass. 

After an hour of Downy-scented fun, I had to ask myself if we really needed to spend so much time, money and effort schlepping the kids and all their accoutrement to a faraway place when a laundromat right down the hill might offer the same level of fun at a fraction of the cost. If we added in riding the escalators at Target, lunch at the IKEA cafeteria and an afternoon spent throwing a collection of rocks down a drain pipe we'd have an entire vacation for mere cents, allowing us to save that money and spend it later on the adult vacation we so richly deserve.

Yet upon check out from our tattered but beloved cabin at Packer Lake, I signed on again for next year...confident that the Blairsden Laundromat will still exist, as it has my entire life, and perhaps in the coming year my children will learn to love other aspects of our summer vacation, be that hiking or just the joy of the rusted junk yard next to the laundromat. We'll cross our fingers and update our tetanus shots, and in the meantime will determine if we really need to spend money on a holiday camp vs sending the kids down the hill with a pocket full of quarters and their names and numbers sewn into their little jackets. Bien viaje, niños!